


Talia

by MelyndaR



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:54:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25384885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyndaR/pseuds/MelyndaR
Summary: “I was married once… before.”It slipped out one night as the two of them were doing the dishes after dinner. They were living together, yes, but not yet engaged, and that wasn’t the sort of thing that people just said to their girlfriend. But he had, quietly and without looking at her as he scrubbed a pot.
Relationships: Delilah Fielding/Talia David, Delilah Fielding/Timothy McGee, Talia David/Timothy McGee, Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo
Kudos: 8





	Talia

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story in October of 2017, so it's canon-divergent (besides the ways that become obvious) from 15x01.

“I was married once… before.”

It slipped out one night as the two of them were doing the dishes after dinner. They were living together, yes, but not yet engaged, and that wasn’t the sort of thing that people just _said_ to their girlfriend. But he had, quietly and without looking at her as he scrubbed a pot.

It was the anniversary of Talia’s death, and she’d been on his mind all day, and he really just wanted Delilah to know about this piece of his past. Not that he’d _intentionally_ withheld it; it was just that it all seemed like a time in his life so far removed from now that it hadn’t ever really mattered… or at least it hadn’t come up.

Until now. Because he’d told her.

Delilah dropped the plate she’d been drying, but it only landed in her lap. She stared at him, mouth gaping and eyes widening until they began to sharpen instead. “What?!”

“It was complicated, and… disjointed at best… and brought on entirely by our fathers,” he began to explain falteringly as he rinsed off the pot. “I was seventeen when my dad received a six-month assignment to go to Israel. I was the only one who went with him. There… were actually two girls, sisters, that I married.”

“ _What_?!”

His head lolled forward as he moved to rub his eyes only to remember that his hands were covered in sudsy water. “Sweetheart, it was solely our fathers’ plan. The marriage between the elder girl and I ended when she turned twenty-one and we annulled it. The youngest sister and I were married less time than that – three years. She died very young. We never even lived together, only met three times in our lives. But… it’s the anniversary of her death, and I’d been thinking about her today, and I just thought you should know about it all.”

“Yeah,” Delilah nodded emphatically. “I’d think so.”

“Look, I’m sorry I never told you, but she…” he swallowed, hearing how horrible it sounded even in his head. “It was a long time ago, and it doesn’t really matter anymore… except for on days like today.”

Delilah paused long enough to take a breath, calm down, and realize what he meant. “The anniversary of her death.” She peered up at him, reprioritizing as she asked, “Are you okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I think so. I just… thought you should know. I’m sorry for just springing that on you; I know it’s weird.”

“It is,” Delilah agreed readily. “But…” she drew in a breath, still clearly processing. “I’m glad you told me, and if you ever want to talk about it – about them – I… think I would be willing to listen.”

He smiled at her, feeling a little surprised at her open acceptance before he leaned down to kiss the top of her head. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

“Any time.”

* * *

Though Tim knew Delilah meant what she’d said and knew she _probably_ wouldn’t be bothered by something that really _didn’t_ matter anymore… it wasn’t until Ziva had been declared dead that he told her the very last details of the story surrounding his unusual teenage marriage. Specifically, that the names of the sisters he had married were Ziva and Talia David.

“Yes, Delilah, _that_ Ziva David – who I was quite content to divorce long before she even _came_ to NCIS, let alone _left_ the team.”

That particular detail had come as a shock, understandably, and he had sworn Delilah to secrecy over it. In his mind, the less people who knew, the better.

Sure, the director had called them into her office not long after Ziva had started, they had a very concise conversation about the fact that, no, their previous relationship wouldn’t have any bearings at all on their current work one. Yes, they had no qualms with proving it in the field, but could she please read that fact in what case files she saw from them instead of telling Gibbs to keep an eye on them? By some miracle, Director Shepherd had agreed, and that was the last anyone had spoken to either Tim or Ziva about their marriage.

Tali was mentioned even less around Tim; no one had any reason to think they knew one another, so no one brought her up. Tim and Ziva proceeded as if they were strangers – really they might as well had been; they’d only met twice – and that was that. It just didn’t come up in any way, shape, or form, and Tim and Ziva were both glad for it.

* * *

“Oooh, _boy_! Oh boy, oh boy!”

Tim looked up and over the edge of his laptop towards the blonde sitting across from him. He raised his eyebrows, asking with a small frown, “Anything you’d like to share with the class, Bishop?”

“Umm…” Ellie picked up her laptop, taking it with her as she leaned over his desk with it. “You know how we all decided we were going to buy Tali a little something for her birthday, give her a mini gift shower from _Abba_ ’s old friends in America?”

“Of course,” Tim peered curiously at Ellie’s laptop. “What about it?”

Ellie swallowed, looking nervously between him and her screen. “I wanted to double-check the address where we needed to send Tali’s presents, but I think I stumbled into something a lot bigger. There was a discrepancy on the address I kept seeing, so I dug a little deeper. Tony and Tali are fine in Paris, but… I found an address in Israel that kept popping up for a ‘Talia David’ who is definitely related to Ziva.”

Internally, he winced, reminding Ellie, “She had a sister who died twenty years ago; Tali is her namesake.”

“Which would make perfect sense if the address was an older one,” Ellie agreed. “But this address is new – or _newer_ – than that, and tied to a list of names that it shouldn’t be.”

“What do you mean?”

Ellie pointed to a few lines of text on the screen. “Twenty years ago, Ari David bought a house in a middle of nowhere village in Israel, but for all intents and purposes, he appears to have stayed there for about two weeks before he abandoned the house. _But_ when Ari died, the house was willed to a Talia _McGee_.”

Ellie was on just enough of a roll that she didn’t notice how Tim sat up straight and stiff suddenly, staring at the screen. She commented only “small world, huh?” and continued her explanation without batting an eye. “I can’t find any record of a woman with that name who _truly_ exists outside of the necessary documentation to own the house. But _here’s_ where it’s weird: record shows that _Ziva_ bought the house… a month _after_ she was declared dead.” She peered at Tim thoughtfully, saying, “I swear I only wanted an address in Paris, but when this popped up… I got curious. And I get that the house is in the middle of nowhere and coincidences aren’t likely to be investigated, but… this is just weird. Like, _really_ weird, don’t you think?”

“What do _you_ think?” Tim turned the question back onto her.

“From what I’ve heard of her…” Ellie chewed on her bottom lip before admitting quietly, “I think Ziva David could still be alive.”

* * *

First they told the others on their team – Gibbs, Torres, Abby, Jimmy, Reeves. Ellie even explained her findings to the director. He told them he thought they were reaching, but they could send _one_ agent out to check the address _off the clock_ if someone wanted to take an impromptu vacation day or two.

“I’m not sending one of my agents out there alone,” Gibbs immediately objected to that idea.

Vance peered at him from beneath his eyebrows, rolling his eyes and folding his hands on his desk before he asked serenely, “Agent Gibbs, have you called DiNozzo and explained this possibility to him yet?”

“No,” Gibbs ceded, instantly understanding what would happen.

“I thought not. In that case, tell DiNozzo to get on the next plane stateside. I can personally arrange a babysitter for his daughter if he would prefer.”

Ellie went to make that call while the men lingered in Vance’s office. “What?” the director asked them.

“Who’s going to go with DiNozzo?” Reeves asked.

“I’m the obvious choice,” Tim spoke up quickly, thinking more of Ellie’s mention of _Talia McGee_ then he was of anything else that he actually said. “Reeves and Torres don’t make sense because they never knew either Tony or Ziva, and Boss is, well, the boss. So I’m the most obvious choice.”

“Is that all right with you, Agent Gibbs?” Vance asked, deferring to the team leader.

Gibbs shrugged, and Tim purposely ignored the curiosity behind the Marine’s eyes as he nodded. “Sure, McGee. But you’d better be ready to go as soon as Bishop hangs up with DiNozzo, because he’ll be chomping at the bit just as soon.”

“No problem, Boss.”

* * *

“I _really_ don’t want you to go, Tim.” Delilah wasn’t whining through the phone, not quite, but it was something close. “Call me paranoid, but…”

She trailed off, and he closed his eyes, swallowing a sigh. “Do you want to come too?” he asked impulsively. “I’m sure Tony would be glad to see you.” _And he’d found it easiest to sleep with her nearby after coming home from Paraguay, besides._

The suggestion actually shocked her into silence for a couple of seconds before she said, “Let me see if I could arrange something here; I would love to go with you.”

He doubted she would still love it if he’d had the time to explain all of his misgivings and reasons for wanting so desperately to go, but there wasn’t time.

Ellie slipped her phone back in her pocket, informing Tim, “Tony says he’ll meet our people in Paris. He’s not willing to backtrack and waste time if Ziva’s out there.”

He nodded his understanding. “That would be great, Delilah, and if we do find Ziva by some miracle I’m sure she’d be glad to meet you. But I’ve got to go, okay?”

“Tim?”

“Yeah?”

“Is there anything else going on?”

He swallowed back a sigh since his coworkers were so close nearby. “I’ll tell you on the flight to Paris, okay? I promise.”

“Okay,” she said on a sigh. “Love you.”

“I love you, too, honey.”

* * *

 _His wife was the most amazing woman on the planet_ , Tim decided, watching Tony and Delilah from across the aisle of the plane they were on. Beside Tim and directly across the aisle from her father, Tali was looking through an on-flight magazine as Delilah and Tony talked quietly, their heads bent together over his laptop and the information that Ellie had sent him. He couldn’t hear well enough to make out exactly what they were saying, but he knew that her expression was calm, and her tone soothing and in-control. Not that he expected much else from her, but still.

He seriously doubted he would be as calm as her if their places had been reversed.

He’d sat beside her on the flight to Paris and told her he suspected that his teenage bride from decades ago was alive an ocean away from the place he called home… and she’d rolled with it. After an initial shock, sure, and a lengthy explanation revolving around the inconsistencies that he and Bishop had dug up, but then she had encouraged him to get the answers he now felt he needed, just to _make sure_ one way or the other. Maybe they didn’t find Ziva, or anyone of interest, in that house in Israel, but they felt they had to try, to double check, so that’s what they were doing. And she was being perfectly accepting about all of it.

Right now, she was even sitting with Tony, and helping him work out how _he_ felt about the notion that Ziva might be alive. He would ultimately be thrilled, they all knew that. But it was the uncertain moments before they landed, before they found out if anyone they used to know was alive or not… it was that time and those feelings that drove Tony to squeezing Delilah’s hand in a nervous, white-knuckled grip as they read over Ellie’s research and bounced ideas back and forth.

Frankly, Tim kind of selfishly wished that Delilah had stayed at his side, holding his hand, rather than asking him how he “wanted to split this up” – one of them handling Tali while the other talked to Tony about what had been found. Tim had chickened out at exactly the wrong moment and slid into the seat beside Tali, leaving Tony and Delilah to themselves on the other side of the aisle.

Truth be told, he admitted to himself, Tony did look more worried about all of this than Tim felt. The thought didn’t really help calm him much though.

* * *

“Tony, what are you doing?” Tim asked, eyebrows knitting together as Tony loomed over Tali with his phone in hand.

“Taking a picture,” Tony answered flatly, something in his eyes that Tim didn’t know how to name. “Tali, look at _abba_.”

Tali obeyed, and Tony snapped a picture before his daughter could smile automatically at the sight of the camera phone. Then, for good measure and with a soft smile, he took a picture of Tali smiling merrily.

“Why?” Tim asked curiously.

Tony bent his head over his phone, typing as he talked. “I’m going to see if I can get us a ride to this house we’re going to investigate.”

“Who?”

Tony finished typing then turned the phone towards Tim. “Seems like a good way to smoke someone out, right?”

Tim’s eyes widened, snapping up to Tony. “It seems like a good way to get us killed!”

“Nah,” Tony dropped his phone back into his pants’ pocket. “She gave up the badge before Tali was even thought of.”

“Does that mean she gave up her _guns_?”

“Probably not,” Tony allowed. “But all I asked for is a ride. Besides, she probably won’t even reply – and if she does somehow, it’ll answer some of our questions before we even have to ask them.”

“I still say you’re just lashing out,” Tim muttered under his breath.

Tony shrugged. “Maybe I am. But either way, we still need a ride, so why not?”

Reasons immediately started coming to mind, but Tim didn’t voice any of them. Tony’s problem could remain Tony’s problem; Tim couldn’t shake the feeling that he would have his own issues facing him as soon as they reached that house.

* * *

Tali dropped off to sleep as the plane coasted to a stop in Israel, and it struck Tim not fifteen minutes later that fact was probably a small mercy. Ziva, alive and well, armed and livid, met them what felt like as soon as they’d stepped off the plane. She and Tony instantly began fighting in a hissed whisper. Her eyes were flashing and his were filled with tears, and it took Ziva a solid two minutes to realize that Tony was clutching their daughter to his chest. Seeing Tali again broke something in her, and first she began to cry, then so did Tony, and then they were kissing one another, and Tim thought it was something of a miracle that Tali didn’t wake up throughout any of it.

They were hot and cold, Tony and Ziva, and he suspected that there would be a more private argument later between them, but eventually they would work things out. Even after their years apart, Tim believed that about them. That was just what people who loved one another did, and no matter what Tony and Ziva did or said to one another, no one doubted that they were in love. They would make it in the end… but seeing _them_ reunited, Tim began to wonder if _he_ would make it.

Delilah reached up and squeezed his hand as if she could tell the turn his thoughts had taken, and he squeezed hers right back.

But on the ride into the village, he couldn’t bring himself to ask the question that burned in forefront of his mind. He supposed that, one way or the other, evidence of the truth would come up soon enough, and that just seemed so much easier than asking outright.

* * *

The silence in the group was thick as they walked with Ziva along the dusty streets of Israel, having parked the vehicle at the edge of the village. She glanced at Tali, sleeping soundly in the makeshift sling Tony had strapped to his back. “I’m glad that you got to meet her, even though I’m sure you know I wish the lies hadn’t been necessary.”

Tony glanced back at Ziva, saying shortly, but as if he was having a little trouble hanging onto his anger when she was _actually here and alive_ , “I’m glad, too, but, yeah… a few less lies would’ve been very nice over the years, you know?”

Ziva sighed. “I wish I could say those were the last of the truths we’ll need to untangle, I really do, but I’m afraid there’s… a couple more things.”

“We don’t have any more kids, right?” Tony asked dryly.

“No,” Ziva agreed. “We do not.”

Tim pushed down the thread of worry that tried to work its way up from his stomach. Surely he had just _imagined_ that Ziva had glanced at him when she’d said that. Surely he was letting his own imagination run away with him. _There was no way that_ his _Tali could be alive, right?_

* * *

These were not the modern streets of Tel Aviv that Tim remembered walking down the few times he’d been to Israel previously. On either side of him now were sparse, tiny houses made of clay bricks and slats of wood. There was very little shrubbery to be seen, and a few nearly-starved dogs were wandering the streets. Some of the houses had donkeys or goats staked nearby, and kids wandered, in some cases half-dressed, through it all.

“Is this even a village?” Tony asked, looking around.

“It is,” Ziva answered archly. “Small but safe. As good a place as… a friend could find to raise children far away from… everything. This is our home.”

She gestured to a house that was directly on the roadside. It was nearly twice as big as most of the other buildings on the street, even though it still wasn’t particularly large, and it looked as if someone had put real effort into it. There was a bush of purple flowers on either side of the entryway, and as they all approached the house, the street dogs began circling them.

“David…” Delilah said warily, eyeing the dogs cautiously as she wheeled backwards, almost bumping into Tim.

“Don’t worry.” A young man emerged from the shadows of the house, a rifle held loosely by his side. “They only mean to protect the hand that feeds them. Speak softly, and _Ima_ swears that won’t harm you.”

“They’re probably just curious about your chair, too, D,” Tim pointed out, putting a hand on her shoulder. His wife was definitely not an animal person.

The young man hummed, eyeing them skeptically. “Perhaps,” he allowed. “But I rather doubt it.”

“Hadar,” Ziva stepped to the front of the group, brushing the dogs away as she led them towards the house. “How are things? Your mother? Is the house ready for guests?”

He blinked at her, a frown in his eyes even as he smiled thinly. “I can’t say as they are; we weren’t expecting _guests,_ just you, _doda_ Ziva.”

“Sorry, the trip was spur of the moment on all ends.” Tony didn’t sound sorry at all. “We tend to get a little excited when we hear that one of our own is in fact alive after all these years.”

“There are many more people living then you would suspect…” the stranger surveyed the way Tali slept so comfortably in her father’s arms before hazarding, “Agent DiNozzo.”

Ziva swallowed roughly, moving around the man as she stepped into the house, gesturing for the others to follow. “And we shall deal with that shortly, Hadar.”

The man looked over his shoulder at Ziva, asking, “Did you at least let Ima know they were coming?”

“ _I_ didn’t know they were coming, so, no. I received a text from a chatline Tony and I once used telling me to come to the airport. There was a picture of Tali, and I thought something was wrong, or someone was threatening her, so I went.”

“Without telling me where you’d gone?”

“I told your _Ima_.” Ziva shot him a look, requesting, “Now aren’t you going to let our guests inside?”

Hadar turned back to them, looking over each of them warily before he let Tony go in with Tali. “Who are you two?” he demanded of Tim and Delilah.

“Special Agent Timothy McGee, and Delilah Fielding, my wife.”

“He’s an old friend and colleague; let them in,” Ziva demanded, to which Hadar stepped aside and obeyed, still frowning at Tim like he was trying to figure him out.

Frankly, Tim was frantically trying to place Hadar, too, in any way rather than the one that he _knew_ fit. “I’m confused,” he blurted out quietly, jogging to catch up to Ziva as she showed Tony a room where he could put his sleeping daughter in a bed. “Hadar called you ‘aunt.’ Ari had a kid?”

Ziva shot him a look that Tim wasn’t sure how to translate, saying softly, “Those aren’t questions for me to answer, McGee.”

“Then who?!”

She sighed, set the bags down on the floor, and then stepped out of the room with Tim at her heels. Tony followed, too, though Tim doubted Ziva had particularly meant for him to.

“This way, everyone; I suppose I ought to introduce you all to your hostess. Hadar, take the lady’s things into my room; I might stay with your mother in her room while they’re here.”

Hadar took Delilah’s duffle bag from where she had been carrying it in her lap, and she gasped sharply.

“What?” Tim asked her. “You okay?”

“Your eyes, Hadar,” Delilah began. “I’m sorry, I just…”

“Wasn’t expecting them to be blue?” he smirked not unkindly at Delilah, as if it was something he’d heard dozens of times.

Tim moved closer, getting a better look at him in the light of the oil lamps and natural light coming in through glass-less windows in the walls. Hadar’s eyes were very blue… and a very familiar shade of blue, at that. His stomach twisted nauseatingly, and he turned back to Ziva with a demand in his eyes.

“Be kind to her,” Ziva breathed as they approached the kitchen together. “We only meant to spare everyone pain.”

“Somehow I don’t think that’s where this is going,” he grumbled.

“Be kind,” Ziva repeated forthrightly, “Or both Hadar and I will think nothing of hurting you.”

Tony, Delilah, and Hadar all trailed them into the kitchen. Hadar had apparently blatantly disobeyed his aunt’s wishes meant to – Tim suspected – get him out of the way.

Tim wasn’t even surprised to see a woman sitting at the kitchen table, with her back to them all. “Ziva? Is that you?” she looked over her shoulder at them all. “We… have guests, I see.”

 _Tali_. Tim’s brain nearly short-circuited, looking at her after all of these years. Part of him wanted to shrink back into the shadows, the other part of him wanted to demand answers about… a lot of things. His crazy theory had been right; Ziva’s little sister – _his wife_ – _was alive_!

“This is Agent DiNozzo,” Ziva gestured to the appropriate man, who waved awkwardly at her, questions swimming in his eyes too as Ziva moved further into the room and kissed the woman’s cheek. “Everyone, this is my little sister, Tali.”

“Dead Tali?” Tony snapped before Tim could even open his mouth.

“Yes.” Ziva planted her hands on the opposite side of the table, standing so that she could face them all. “She was young, and had an infant. Ari and I… took advantage of a terrible situation to get her and the child out from under our father and the compulsory… service.”

“By lying to absolutely _everyone_ ,” suddenly Tim found his voice, and even as he spoke he knew he was going to regret it. “Even though there were some things I’m pretty sure certain people needed to know?” He glanced sharply in Hadar’s direction while Tali gaped at him for a long moment. He took a deep breath before saying softly, “Hi, Tali.”

“Timothy…” she met his gaze, eyes wide with disbelief and blooming panic.

His mind was still whirling too fast to pick something to focus on, and his stomach was still in knots, but he managed to take off his hat and nod.

She drew in a sharp breath before turning to Hadar. “Obey your aunt. Go take their bags into their rooms.”

“I don’t—”

“She’ll be safe, Hadar,” Tim broke in firmly.

“I don’t know you,” the boy shot back, wariness clear in his eyes.

“But I know her, and I’m very, very sorry that I don’t know you, but—”

He faltered, and it was Ziva who said firmly, “There are some conversations that you simply don’t need to be around.”

“I’m not a child, _doda_ ,” he argued.

“But you are my child, and, god help me, I want to protect you,” Tali said.

“And I—”

“ _I_ will take care of this, Hadar,” Ziva broke in. “Go on.”

He rounded on her, then, snapping, “What could you possibly kn—”

“Quite a lot!” Ziva practically snarled. “Now _go_!”

Hadar shrank a little from the fury in her eyes, and, giving his mother one more faltering look, slipped out of the room. From down the hallway, child Tali cried out for her _abba_.

“Go, Tony,” Ziva said on a sigh. “This does not concern you anyway.”

“Does it concern you?” Tony asked carefully.

“Yes and no. As I recall, I told you the whole story about… my part in _this_ back when…”

“Yeah. When Tali… started. I remember. And you should congratulate me; I didn’t actually punch him for anything.”

“Because I made it perfectly clear that he didn’t actually _do_ anything?”

“Yeah, that.”

“ _Abba_!” Tali screamed.

Tony wheeled and started down the hall. “Coming, sweet girl…”

“Ziva,” Tim and Tali said at the same time, though Tim got the feeling they wanted two very different things from her.

She turned to Tali, and the woman quietly asked her older sister, “What now?”

Ziva shook her head, looked at her for a long moment. “I can’t tell you anything for certain. But.” She looked towards the hallway Tony had headed down. “I am going to leave Tali with Hadar, and I am going to talk to Tony, and we are going to figure ourselves out. I don’t see how you could do anything less. But that’s all I know, dear one.” She kissed her sister’s hair before she left the room, adding, “I know that, and what I already told you, McGee.”

“I meant what I told Hadar; you don’t need to worry about me.”

Ziva paused, looked over her shoulder at him. “I… believe you. But it is not only you I worry about.”

Tim bit the inside of his cheek, pretty sure he hadn’t imagined Ziva glancing at Delilah for a split second before she looked away. He looked between the two women as Delilah watched Talia watch him. Silence hung thick and uncomfortable in the air until Tali motioned to the chair across from her.

“Sit, Timothy. I suspect this will take some time.”

He twisted his hat in his hands without realizing he was doing it, sitting in the seat across from her. She noticed Delilah, seemingly for the first time, and her eyebrows raised sharply. “I see you already have a chair, Agent…”

“Delilah Fielding.” Delilah smiled politely, and Tim could tell she was at least _trying_ to be warm about this, and whatever it was going to turn into.

“It must’ve been a rough journey through the village in your…”

“Wheelchair?” Delilah’s smile became a little more genuine.

Tali nodded before asking with a faltering smile, “Can I ask what brings you all this way, Agent Fielding?”

“I’m not technically an agent, actually. I…” she glanced hesitantly at Tim before turning steady eyes back to Tali. “Am the leader of a DoD team with vested interests in… this situation.”

Tali looked shrewdly between Delilah and Tim, eyeing their ring fingers while trying to keep an impassive expression. Tim watched her brows knit slightly before she appeared to shrug it off. “In any case,” she said carefully, turning back to Tim. “I assume you have questions?”

“Well, yeah,” he answered falteringly. “What...? Why? I… I love you, I _grieved_ for you – my _wife_ – and nobody – not even Ziva, once she joined the team – thought to tell me you were still _alive_?”

“Ziva didn’t know, not at the time,” Tali inserted quickly. “In fact, she put herself into the equation where it wasn’t due earlier. There _was_ a bomb when I was sixteen, and there were… complications in an already increasingly complicated situation. It was Ari’s idea for me to start anew – or at least to disappear from my father’s… notice. For Hadar.”

“Had he even been _born_ yet?” Tim asked, trying to do the math between the last time he had seen her, how old Hadar had to be, and when she had been caught in the bombing.

“He was barely a week old. _Abba_ was being… difficult about his existence. Still. He ranted for months that…” she kept glancing at him and away, looking anywhere but at the two people in the room with her. “It was never supposed to go that far. The politics of a marriage for protection’s sake was sullied by… emotions.”

“He was mad you had sex with your husband?” Delilah surmised incredulously.

Tali looked at her, as if surprised she was following the conversation with such an open mind, while Tim winced internally as he wondered where this conversation was going to head. “You can’t annul a marriage once it’s been consummated,” he explained levelly, looking down at the scarred tabletop. “It made things much more complicated because these marriages were only supposed to last the girls into adulthood and then be annulled. Like Ziva did.”

“No offence, Tali, but I don’t think I like Eli David.”

Tim bit back the urge to snort at the understatement, and even Tali shrugged, admitting, “He had some... not so admirable viewpoints on certain things.” She turned back to the subject at hand, saying, “And that is why Ari went through such pains to hide Hadar and I away. My father wanted me to give up my son! And I simply… couldn’t.”

“And you couldn’t even tell me you were pregnant?” Tim asked quietly, meeting her eyes steadily.

Tali hesitated for a long moment, looking away. Her hands fluttered down to her sides before she laced them together atop the table, saying in that same steady, strained way, “It is like you said. We weren’t supposed to last, and I did not want to tie you down with some misguided idea of responsibility or maybe even loyalty.”

“’Loyalty’, Tali?” he scoffed, shaking his head in irritation. They were done dancing around it, he guessed; this was confirming that Hadar was his – but that was something that was going to have to properly sink in later. He reached across the table without letting himself think about it too much, put his hand atop hers. “Look, I know you’re stubborn; you may be softer than Ziva, but you are just as stubborn, and you always know exactly what you want by the time you ask for it. I get that. _However_ … I’m not a… pushover, and I never have been. Hadar doesn’t exist because you set your mind on something and I gave in; I tried telling you that when I noticed the tone your letters took after I left Israel the last time, but clearly you didn’t listen. I had sex with you because I wanted to because I love you, okay? That’s not _loyalty_ , that’s _love. Okay?_ ”

She smiled at him, but it was in spite of tears in her eyes as she said with a cracking voice, “All I need is for you to… forgive me for not telling you about Hadar. It posed too much of a risk to the life Ari was trying to set up for me, can you understand that?”

It was an unexpected change of topic, and Tim reeled for a second, but went with it, considering it quietly before he answered honestly, “I think so. I’m still processing, to be honest. I _have a son_!”

“You do,” Tali nodded before she swallowed, adding, “But I don’t expect you to reclaim a wife you thought had died. I would never ask you to do that.”

He glanced at Delilah, saw her nod ever so slightly – _thank god they’d been able to talk so freely about this possibility on the flight to Paris_ – before he asked, “What if I want to?”

Tali shook her head, wiping away the single tear that started down her cheek. “Then I would tell you that you don’t know everything about… my life after… the bombing.”

Something sickening curled in his stomach, but he only said gently, “Then tell me.”

Tali shook her head – just as Hadar came close enough to knock on the kitchen doorjamb. “Has anything been solved in here yet?”

Tali turned her hands so that she could clasp Tim’s, asking quietly so that Hadar couldn’t hear, “ _Slih’a_?”

Tim drew in a soft breath. He was still irritated, of course he was, but what else could he say? He nodded, and he meant it. She smiled at him, and then at Hadar, reaching for him with her free hand. “See, _ben_ , we told you all would be well.”

“If all was well, _Ima_ ,” he pointed out, coming closer to kneel beside her chair. “You would not have tears in your eyes.”

“Maybe they are happy tears.”

“No, they’re not. And I would venture I know why, don’t I?” he asked, putting a gentle hand on her knee.

She sighed, looking between Tim and Delilah as she asked, “Could you give us a minute, please?”

The nauseous feeling wasn’t going away, and something niggled terrifyingly at the back of Tim’s mind, but he nodded anyway and stood, walking out behind Delilah. He certainly didn’t feel as if he had any right to do otherwise, at the very _least_ not until he had properly discussed this whole mess with Delilah.

* * *

They went to the bedroom where Hadar had put Delilah’s things. As best as they could figure, that’s where they were meant to stay for the duration of their trip, so… that’s where they landed, him sitting on the edge of the bed, her in her wheelchair with their knees practically touching.

Tim was studying his hands as her spoke, giving them far too much attention and giving Delilah far too little eye contact as he did his best to explain. “I swear to you, Delilah, I didn’t think these marriages had any standing anymore. I didn’t even know if they were real in the first place!” He cringed, admitting, “That’s not strictly true; my dad wouldn’t have been so careful about getting all of the right paperwork done if he hadn’t meant for them to stick while they wanted them to. What I mean is that it all happened so fast for me – for all three of us – that it was just… surreal. We were teenagers, each two years older than the next. My dad and Eli David flew the three of us just past the Lebanese border in the middle of the night; it was barely dawn while we were… exchanging vows.”

He remembered, in a flash, Tali taking one of Ziva’s hands and then one of his once he had placed rings on their fingers and she had given him his. _“Look,” she’d nodded out the ceiling-to-floor window of the government building their fathers had brought them to. The sun had been burning a fiery mix of pink and gold, orange and purple._ He remembered the silhouette of Tali’s face against the sunrise, her hair just as much of an eclectic mess as Ziva’s had ever been. He remembered thinking in that moment that maybe he could learn to love her. _Not her angry, silent older sister who clearly wanted even less to do with this than he did… but maybe he could love Tali._

Then he had received word that she had died, and her letters to him had ceased accordingly, and it hadn’t mattered anymore. Death was no respecter of young love.

He reached out, squeezing Delilah’s hand where it rested, very lightly, on her thigh. “I’m sorry.” Only he couldn’t pinpoint exactly what he was apologizing for.

She shook her head, the amazing, apparently occasionally _very_ forgiving woman he’d married. “Don’t be. You were still under your father’s thumb at the time – and the Tali and Ziva were under Eli David’s. That’s not your fault, and they went about it in a pretty shady way, it sounds like.”

Tim sighed. It wasn’t like he could disagree; he wasn’t even inclined to. “It was all legal; the only reason – as I now understand it – that they did it so quietly was because people here don’t really approve of interfaith marriages.”

“It’s illegal in Israel, but not in Lebanon, I know.”

“Polygamy’s legal in Lebanon, too.”

“But… you’re not married to Ziva anymore, right?”

Tim shook his head, reassuring her of something he’d made clear long ago. “No, we’re not married. I was, in fact, sent annulment papers a couple months after her twenty-first birthday. When we met again when she came to NCIS… we had a very quick conversation at which time we decided it was never to be brought up ever.” He shrugged. “I know it probably doesn’t sound like it, but it was a very mutual decision. We love one another, and we always have in some way, but it was never like that – never romantic – between the two of us.”

“And between you and Tali?”

At Delilah’s soft question, Tim glanced away and out the window, swallowing another sigh. “Honestly? We met three times in person. For three years, we wrote letters back and forth, though. She was my first… and my first love. But then we were told she was dead, so… I moved on.”

They were both silent for a moment, and Tim _despised_ the question he knew she was going to ask him next. Delilah squeezed his hand, though he had no idea what she meant to convey by the gesture before she asked, “And now? Do you still love her now?”

“I don’t know, D. How can I? I love her like you love a memory, like anyone who fondly remembers their first girlfriend… but do I love her now? Do I love the woman sitting in the other room talking to my _twenty-year-old son_? I don’t know.”

Delilah put a hand to his cheek, gently guiding him so that their eyes were meeting. “What’s your gut say?” She phrased it as a question, but every centimeter of her expression said she already knew exactly what the answer was. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it, and lost a fight against the urge to apologize again.

This time he was pretty sure he knew what he was apologizing for.

But she shook her head, saying again, “Don’t apologize. I…” she leaned back in her chair, studying the wall over his shoulder, and he recognized the very rare expression that came with a moment when she was actually having to search for the words she wanted to say. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been battling the preconception that I’m some sort of ‘other woman’ in your life?”

Tim startled. “What?”

“Well, for starters, it was kind of a really big deal in your office that you dated Abby for a while; everyone knew about it, and they made sure I did, too.”

He groaned. “Oh, D, I—!”

“Shh! I’m not done. I’m not mad, Tim. I’m not. I’m just a little… shocked.”

He snorted.

“Yeah, I know, right?” She smirked a little before continuing, “But I am processing. And I know that as long as you want me around, we’re going to face this like we’ve faced everything else – together. No matter what you decide, no matter what your gut tells you the right thing is here, I’m here for you, okay.”

“Okay,” he muttered, leaning over to kiss her forehead. “And Delilah?”

“Yeah?”

He squeezed her hand this time, nearly hard enough for it to hurt her, he was sure. “I will _always_ want you around.”

She smiled. “Thanks, honey.”

“Thank _you_ , sweetheart.”

* * *

Dusk was settling over the village by the time that Tim and Delilah emerged from the bedroom, and Ziva and Tony were nowhere to be found – Tim assumed they were elsewhere having the conversation Ziva had said they needed – but little Tali was sitting on the kitchen table, chattering to her aunt while Hadar moved about the kitchen, cooking.

“Have you had dinner yet?” Tali asked, covertly assessing them after their conversation.

“We haven’t, no,” Delilah answered.

Tim bit back against admitting that he wasn’t really hungry regardless. He didn’t want it to come out wrong. He didn’t want to sound ungrateful, or as if he was angry with her, because he wasn’t; mostly he was just… confused. He wanted the missing pieces of all of this filled in, but now wasn’t really the time to ask for those answers. Now was the time, apparently, to have a sort of family dinner.

Delilah caught onto that fact before Tim did, rolling up to Hadar to ask, “Is there anything you need me to do?”

“No, thank you,” he answered automatically.

“Come on,” she smiled at him almost teasingly. “Don’t baby me because of my legs; I like to cook, and I’ve been sitting on a plane most of the day. Let me do something to help?”

Hadar turned more fully to Delilah then, looking her over from head to toe with an expression that Tim wasn’t sure how to translate, though he was at least giving her a thoughtful half-smile. “Far be it from me to… ‘baby’ you, Ms. Fielding.” He dropped a few carrots into her lap, requesting, “Slice these at the table, please?”

Delilah nodded happily. “That’s more like it. I’d be happy to.”

“Tali?” Both with the name looked at Tim as he stepped closer, though the elder had to tear her gaze away from Delilah and her son to do it.

“Yes?”

“How are we supposed to tell which one of you two we’re talking about?” he gestured between her and little Tali. “Is there a way people already use?”

She smiled softly, and a little amused. “Ziva took to calling me by my full name.”

“So you are Talia, and she’s Tali?”

It was a safe thing to talk about, but when Talia nodded, that conversation seemed to have run its course, and though he felt bad about it, he turned to Hadar instead, taking the same route Delilah had as he asked, “Do you need me to help you with anything for dinner?”

Hadar was just as wary of Tim as he was Delilah, if the look in his eye was any indicator, but he just shrugged, gesturing to the rows of shelving on one wall. Plates and bowls were there, and he suggested, “Help Tali set the table, if you like. Tali, help Uncle Tim set the table, please.”

Tali jumped from the table onto her feet even as the little girl gave Tim a skeptical look, repeating, “’Uncle Tim’?”

“Well,” every other person in the room was watching him as he realized, “Yeah. I am your uncle, Tali.” He grinned at her, handing her a couple of the bowls that he had gotten down from the shelf.

Tali put the bowls on the table, her little eyes thoughtful.

“What is it?” Tim asked her with a soft smile.

“Are you Hadar’s uncle too?”

Tim hesitated, his smile freezing in place before he answered with a thread of heaviness in his tone. “No, I’m not.” He didn’t know exactly what Hadar wanted him to be to him, but he had a feeling it wasn’t anything as simple as “uncle.”

“Uncle Tim is your uncle, Tali,” Talia explained. “Because he’s Hadar’s _abba_ , just like your _ima_ is Hadar’s _doda._ Does that make sense?”

Tali’s brows knit together, trying to sort it out as she finished setting the table. “A little.”

“Good enough.” Hadar ruffled her curly hair with a tight smile. “It’ll make more sense as you get older.”

“Will it?” Delilah asked Hadar with an arched eyebrow, her implication pretty clear in her eyes. _Did Hadar find the situation with his own_ abba _clear just because he was older?_

Hadar took a deep breath, stirring the stew he was making for another second before he turned around to face Delilah, asking her frankly, “Do you want me to like you or not?”

She looked a little taken aback by the question, but recovered quickly, asking him, “Why do I care? I’m not your mom.”

“No,” Hadar stared steadily at her, but Delilah was the last person to back down from the challenge in his eyes. “But I do know how you were introduced at the door of this house. That means that, like it or not, all of us are related in one way or another. So, like it or not… we will all – hopefully – learn to at least tolerate each other.”

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” she replied with a tight smile. Her eyes said that she wished they could be something more than tolerant of each other, but she wasn’t going to put her money on that until she had seen evidence that it could actually happen.

Hadar nodded, admitting, “I even think you could be good for _Ima_ in some things.”

“What do you mean?” Delilah asked, cocking her head to the side as she looked at him.

Tim didn’t think she noticed the way Talia’s eyes widened slightly, the way she appeared to want to be anywhere but here, but he noticed, and he had a feeling Hadar did, too. Yet the younger man continued. He set the spoon down and moved towards his mother with a grave expression.

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that you’ve admitted any of this yourself?”

“Don’t,” Talia said on a sharp breath.

“You’re not stupid, _Ima_ , you know what they are, yes?” he gestured vaguely between Tim and Delilah.

“Married, yes?” Talia asked Tim, and he nodded, trying to figure out what was going on all while ignoring the growing worry gnawing at his stomach.

“Before or after…” Talia waved a hand towards Delilah’s chair.

Delilah answered, “Dating before, married after.”

“That does not make sense,” Talia said slowly, looking between him and Delilah with mounting confusion in her eyes.

“Why not?” Delilah asked guardedly.

At the same time, Tim queried while feeling confused in his own right, “How doesn’t it?”

“It is just that…” she trailed off uncertainly, her gaze ultimately flickering to Hadar before it dropped down to her hands and she lapsed into silence.

Hadar took that as his cue to speak. “Ms. Fielding, could you watch over all of this?” He indicated the food he’d been preparing, and Delilah nodded.

“Sure.”

“Tali, why don’t you go play in your room. We will call you when it is time for dinner.”

Tali scampered off, and when she had gone, Hadar reached up to the topmost shelf on the wall. He pulled down a laptop and booted it up as he sat down at the table.

“I feel like I’m missing something obvious here,” Tim admitted, if just to fill the silence.

“You are,” Hadar affirmed flatly. “But _Ima_ doesn’t like to talk about it, so I’m going to let you read it instead.”

“Read what?”

“Her medical file. The real one, not the one that declares her dead the day of the bombing.”

Hadar was staring intently at the laptop, typing away, and Tim peered over his shoulder, his eyebrows raising as he realized aloud, “Is that a dark web site?”

Hadar only smiled grimly in response.

“Son, you don’t have to –”

 _Talia was scared,_ Tim finally put a name to the emotion in her eyes as Hadar gave her a gentle look and said kindly, “You can’t hide this, and no one can run from this. I am surprised no one has noticed it yet, actually.”

“Noticing,” Delilah spoke up again. “And saying something are two entirely different things.”

Hadar and Talia both turned to Delilah in surprise as Tim, letting his worry get the best of him, demanded, “What am I missing?!”

Hadar turned back to his computer, Talia bit her lip as she searched for words, and Delilah held her hand out to him, saying, “Come here.” He did, putting his hand in hers and waiting for her to elaborate. “Come _here_ ,” she repeated, tugging on his hand. He knelt by her chair, and she nodded towards the table, ordering gently, “Look.”

Talia laughed humorlessly as Tim tried to noticed whatever Delilah had from this angle. From here, the only difference was that he could see underneath the table if he wanted, but all he saw there was two sets of chair legs and Talia’s legs, and even those were covered by a blanket…

… _That was draped very strangely._

He narrowed his eyes, trying to work out exactly what he was seeing, and Talia let him do it, watching him intently. His stomach twisted violently as he realized what he _had_ to be seeing, and he tilted backwards, keeping one hand on Delilah’s thigh and the other planted firmly on the packed dirt floor lest he fall over.

“Deep breath,” Delilah murmured, kissing his temple.

He obeyed, drawing in a breath before he surged to his feet and returned to staring over Hadar’s shoulder at the computer screen. “Medical file” wasn’t an entirely accurate description of what Hadar had pulled up. It was an incident report, and Hadar stood, motioning Tim into his seat and pointing towards a particular section on the screen for him to read.

The medical jargon wasn’t making sense to his fritzing brain, but he knew that none of it was good. _“Buried under rubble for forty-eight hours… right leg blown off at the knee from the force of the blast… nerves severed in left leg… amputated_ —”

He stopped reading, abruptly slamming the laptop closed.

“Timothy?” Talia asked softly.

_She had no legs…_

“I’m okay,” he said faintly, looking at her as she sat across from him, but he wasn’t really seeing her. He was too busy imagining the sixteen-year-old mother that she had been. Her entire body covered in dust, the lower half of her cut off from sight but strangely unable to be felt as she screamed into the darkness, begging for help only to hear her words echo back at her from far too close off of the rubble that surrounded her.

“Are you sure?” This time it was Talia reaching across the table for his hand. “You don’t look well.”

“Well, no,” he said on a sharp laugh. He squeezed her hand, swallowing roughly as he said, “Tali, I can’t imagine—”

“You should not try to.”

There was a sternness in her tone that was unusual enough to the Tali that he remembered that he focused properly on her. Her eyes were dark and fierce, and she _meant it_.

“We are here now, Timothy. That is in the past. Let’s leave it there, hm?”

He drew in a breath through his nose, let it out through his mouth, agreeing in a low voice, “I’ll try.”

“Thank you. That is all I ask.” She stared at the laptop for a few seconds, giving Tim a moment to catch his breath and sort out his thoughts as she lost herself in her own. Then she picked it up, and held it out to Delilah. “Would you like to see?” she asked her.

Delilah accepted the laptop, but looked warily at Tim instead of opening it.

“It’s an incident report from the bomb;” he explained in a hollow tone. “There’s a… footnote with some of the… bodily repercussions felt by the victims.”

“I think ‘felt’ might be the wrong word,” Talia remarked, and Tim winced before realizing that she was smiling dryly at him. Joking. About amputations.

“I apologize in advance,” he muttered. “I’m bad at this. I don’t know how to handle it, and I stick my foot in my mouth, and… yeah. Sorry in advance for being an idiot.”

She blinked uncomprehendingly at him before hazarding cautiously, “Does that mean that…” She looked between him and Delilah before starting again. “I told you, I’m not going to ask you to claim me; that’s not what you… signed up for. You don’t deserve…” she sighed. “You don’t deserve to have to bear such a large burden, and I’m not going to ask you to.”

Tim looked at her, his jaw clenching on instinct. “You are _not_ a ‘burden,’ and don’t _ever_ let me hear you say that again. Are we clear?”

Talia gaped at him in surprise, but he only raised his eyebrows, waiting for an answer. He’d dealt with this coming from a more stubborn woman then Talia; he wasn’t going to back down this time around.

Nausea punched him in the gut again as his thoughts replayed in his mind. _This time around… here he went again. With yet another woman he loved._ He really could’ve been sick. Not for himself, but for them. He just… was at a loss.

But this much he knew how to respond to, and so he waited for her reply.

She nodded, clearly caught off guard. “All right.”

“Good.” He drew in a shallow breath, kissing her knuckles where he held her hand in his.

“Does that mean that you’re not…” she faltered as she searched for the right term, but Tim was pretty sure he knew what she was getting at.

“Abandoning you intentionally this time? No, not going to happen. If you want to find a way to make this work, then so do we.”

He included Delilah in the sentiment, but when Talia glanced towards her, her expression pinched with concern. “Mrs… Delilah?” Her hands fluttered to her sides a second time, and it struck Tim that she was reaching for wheels on a wheelchair. She huffed lightly, her gaze flickering meaningfully between Tim and Delilah.

Hadar moved quicker. “ _Em choreget_?” He knelt beside her chair, removing the computer from her lap. “What is it?”

Delilah had gone ghostly pale, and she only managed to stammer much of what Tim had thought. “Oh, wow, Talia. I can’t imag—”

“Don’t!”

“I know, I know.” Delilah shook her head, and the shock cleared from her eyes at the same time. She wheeled closer to Talia until she was at her side, chair by chair, anyway. “But… wow.” She swallowed, recalling, “I know – I remember – what it is to be up close and personal with a bomb detonation, but… being alone with nothing but numb limbs, darkness, and the reverberations of the blast—”

“Was not pleasant, no,” Talia interrupted quickly.

Something Delilah had said had struck a chord with Talia, and her hand began to tremble in Tim’s even as her jaw tightened. Delilah blinked, and regret flashed in her eyes as she realized too late that she’d said too much.

“I’m sorry,” Delilah brushed a hand carefully across Talia’s shoulders before she began to rub them. “I said too much.”

Talia shook her head, dismissing it all by saying, “It was a long time ago.”

“Yes, it was,” Hadar’s voice was a little too loud and a little too cheerful as he changed the subject. “But right now dinner is ready, so are we going to eat it, or not?”

Talia chuckled lightly, all three adults at the table straightening up. “Yes, please,” Delilah agreed. So Hadar called for Tali, and they all sat down to eat and move onto lighter topics of conversation.

* * *

Tony and Ziva had returned in time to eat, too, and they, alongside Tali, had volunteered to do cleanup.

“What are the rest of us supposed to do now, then?” Delilah asked, mostly aiming the question at Hadar.

“After dinner, we usually go wind down in the living room,” Hadar answered. “We have a nice, boring evening, is all.”

“Boring sounds perfect,” Tim said, standing from the table as Hadar did the same.

“What is it, Talia?” Ziva asked her sister, and Tim turned to see his wife _– well, one of them, and_ that _thought was going to take some getting used to!_ – looking worriedly down the hallway.

“Ima,” Hadar said with an excessive amount of patience in his tone, and absolutely none in his eyes. “Would you like to _sleep_ at the kitchen table?”

Talia’s eyes first snapped at him, but then her expression faltered. “Of course not.”

“What’s down the hallway?” Tony asked.

“Her wheelchair,” Ziva muttered as understanding dawned.

“For pity’s sake,” Delilah muttered under her breath, scratching the bridge of her nose as she asked Talia, “Have you dealt with embarrassment about all of this for twenty years?”

“No,” Hadar answered for her when Talia seemed at a loss for words. “This is what it is, and since I can remember, it has never been a problem.”

“So why is it now?” Delilah asked gently.

Tim stared between the two silent women, processing an idea before he said more gruffly then he’d meant to, “Don’t you dare make this because of me.”

“It is not!” she insisted – too quickly, and while glancing away at exactly the wrong time.

He looked away, grinding his teeth. “Talia…” he wasn’t sure if he was coaxing or groaning.

_Talia. Talia, who had dreamed of the stage as a teenager, something her father likely never would’ve allowed. Talia, who was so compassionate, but also vain. Even now, at the end of the day, her makeup remained beautifully done, and that probably thanks to reapplication._

_How much must it hurt her now to be seen like this?_ It had to have been a learning curve for her, then, and maybe now again.

“Forget the wheelchair, if you want to,” he suggested casually, crouching down beside her seat to ask quietly, “Can I carry you into the living room?”

He watched several emotions play across her face, including surprise, mortification, and finally a tender sort of curiosity that led to her hesitantly nodding.

It was different from carrying Delilah. Delilah was ferociously independent and _stubborn_ ; she had relearned how to do everything for herself. But on multiple occasions – when she was tired, or sick, or during one memorable month when she’d had a broken arm – she had allowed Tim to carry her around their home. One hand around her back, one under her knees, her arms wrapped around his neck. Easy enough as it became merely a part of life, routine.

Talia was not Delilah.

Delilah, bless her, had quickly herded everyone but Tim and Talia out of the kitchen, all the better to save them from embarrassment when he nearly _dropped her_ the moment he tried to pick her up.

“No knees,” Talia muttered, pressing her face into his shoulder. She was shaking, and if she was crying because of him, he was going to feel like the world’s biggest heel.

“Sorry, I—”

“It’s all right.” She lifted her head just enough for him to catch a glimpse of her face, and he was shocked by what he realized.

Halfway horrified, he demanded on a stunned chuckle, “Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m not.” But she was grinning as she faced him better. Her expression softened as she reminded him, “I’m not… Delilah.”

“I know that.”

Talia kept smiling, clearly determined to make the best of the awkwardness. “Kneel in front of my chair. Back to me, please.”

He shook his head with a small smile, figuring out where this was going. She locked her arms around his neck, and he stood very carefully, locking his own arms underneath her. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she answered lightly. “When Hadar first decided he was old enough, big enough to help me get around the house without the aid of my chair, this is a way we first worked out how to do it.”

“Is that your way of saying you think I’m a scrawny teenager still?” he asked with a small smirk.

“No,” she replied, but there was something in her tone that she that wasn’t the _entire_ truth.

He turned his head just enough to look at her out of the corner of his eye. “Oh, really?”

She must’ve seen a glimmer of mischief in his eyes because she said uncertainly, “…Tim?”

“Would weaker, teenage me have been able to do _this_ without dropping you?”

Her entire face fell. “What do you mean?”

Tim tightened his hold on her and began to spin in place. She shrieked in surprise, right in his ear, and Tim laughed and kept right on spinning. In a blur, he noticed that someone had returned to stand in the kitchen doorway when Talia had screamed. Tim nearly stumbled, and their viewer stepped forward quickly. Tim felt a firm, steady hand on his shoulder, and the second fell between Talia’s shoulder blades. Stilling, Tim looked over at Hadar.

The boy – young man, really – was looking at him with wide and sparkling, yet confused, eyes. He was smiling, at least, but it was pretty clear that he didn’t know what to make of what he was seeing.

“What is the matter?” Talia asked Hadar innocently.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, of course.”

Hadar nodded slowly, blinking as he appeared to process, then move on. “In any case, I saw the girls coming up the street a moment ago.”

Talia shrugged. “Then go open the door, son.”

“What am I to tell them?” There was nearly an edge of wailing to his tone, and Tim wondered for a second what sort of toddler his son had been.

Talia asked in the same patient tone, “About what?”

“Tony, Delilah, _him_.” Hadar waved a hand at Tim.

“Tell them the _truth_ ,” Talia said with raised eyebrows. She was, probably at best, unimpressed.

“Aisha, though, will n—”

A knock sounded at the front door right before it opened. “Hadar?” a feminine voice called a little uncertainly.

“Go on, son.” Talia nodded into the front room. They could all hear Ziva making introductions in the next room, and Talia said, firm and gentle, “Don’t make your _doda_ explain all of this to everyone.”

Hadar swallowed roughly, and went back into the other room, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else.

“I don’t understand,” Tim admitted. “I missed something, didn’t I?”

Talia rested her chin on Tim’s shoulder. “Hadar, Aisha, and Namata. They are all… together. A very good… balancing act for our son, and something of an open secret in the village. Both girls come spend their evenings with us most days.”

“And they’re both here now?” Tim asked slowly, working on processing even more information the day had brought him.

“M-hm.”

“He’s worried about one of the girls, Aisha?”

Talia inhaled slowly. “Yes and no, but it’s not my place to talk about her. Why don’t you just go meet them instead? Besides, I want to ask Namata something.”

So, into the front room Tim went.

Two girls, both in their late teens, stood awkwardly near the entrance, one looking merely startled, the other decidedly wary. Hadar stood beside the one with hostility in her gaze, though Tim didn’t miss the fact that he was holding one of each of the girls’ hands.

“Hello, girls,” Talia said brightly, as if she didn’t notice any of the slight tension in the room, as if she wasn’t being carried in by a man they didn’t know.

“Hello, _Ima_ Talia,” the girls echoed back in a nearly perfect chorus, but it was clear they were further unnerved to see Talia in the arms – as it were – of a stranger.

Tim moved towards an empty space on the couch beside Ziva and managed to lower Talia onto it. “There. Comfortable now?”

Talia nodded, taking his hand with a smile to gently pull him onto the couch beside her. Delilah sat in her wheelchair beside the couch on Tim’s other side and took his free hand when he sat. Talia smiled sweetly at them, then at the trio standing in the middle of the living room. “For goodness sake, sit! You’re all at home here, aren’t you?”

“Of course, Ima,” the girl with brown hair smiled kindly at Talia and broke away from the other two to come kiss Talia on the cheek.

The girl with black hair sat on the floor, her back to the wall, facing the room, windows, and door. “This is Namata,” Talia said of the brunette. “And she’s Aisha.” She nodded to the girl Hadar had sat on the floor beside.

“And you are?” Namata smiled politely at Tim – before her eyes narrowed ever so slightly upon his eyes.

Tim fought back the urge to sigh before he answered, “NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee.”

Aisha went motionless against the wall, her eyes the only thing that turned towards Hadar with questions swimming in them.

Hadar sighed, but apparently he had seen the wisdom in Talia’s advice, because he nodded, muttering, “כן, טימותי מק'גי.”

Namata’s eyes blew wide where she stood, and Aisha started blinking rapidly before she opened her mouth and began to ask something in Hebrew. Namata shook her head, cutting Aisha off midsentence before the brunette asked with a thin-lipped pleasantness, “Is there anyone else…?”

She struggled to find a word to finish her sentence, and Aisha said something clipped – once again in Hebrew, something outside the realm of the simple words that Tim knew.

Hadar nodded towards Delilah, who smiled brightly, cooing, “Aw – you think I’m relevant?”

Aisha’s entire face dropped as she realized Dee had understood the whole of the conversation.

Namata shrugged off that bit of information, asking Hadar, “Why?”

“Can you go get the laptop?” he asked, exchanging a question for a question. Namata hurried off, returning a moment later. She handed Hadar the laptop and sat down on her boyfriend’s free side.

“What are you looking for?” Aisha asked, glancing between Tim, Delilah, and the laptop screen.

Hadar hummed, his eyes never leaving the screen as he typed and searched for the right term. “Priorit…ization.”

Tim’s eyebrows flew up as he demanded warily, “Prioritization of what, exactly?”

“Shhh,” Talia bid urgently, patting him soothingly on the hand.

Watching the trio on the floor, Tim quickly realized why his input was totally unnecessary. Namata turned wide eyes to Hadar, and he could see the thought of “you did _not_ just say that” starting to burn in her dark eyes. Namata flatly shut the laptop nearly atop Hadar’s fingers as she rebuked him with a simple, “No!”

Hadar opened his mouth to defend himself, but Aisha spoke first, pressing her palms into her eyes as she did so. “Listen. I’m sure you’re… terrified, and I _know_ you’re protective, but… you’ll break someone you didn’t mean to if you try… that line of thought.”

“You cannot know that,” Hadar objected.

Namata said softly, “I bet I could.”

“How so?” he asked as his eyebrows drew together. “Am I right, then?”

She nodded. “I _suspect_ so, but if so, something is… off.”

“What do you mean?” Hadar asked, and Tim was intrigued by the fact that worry only mounted in his son’s eyes.

Namata said something in careful Hebrew, but it was Delilah who waved her hand at the trio and beckoned, “Go on, somebody crack the code!”

“You’re that hesitant to talk about it yourself?” Aisha asked Delilah, before glancing at Namata as she added, “Whatever ‘it’ is?”

“Oh, my fierce warrior…” Namata shook her head fondly at Aisha, saying something in Hebrew.

Aisha drew in a slow breath. “Oh… wow.” She asked Namata something in Hebrew, but glanced at Hadar too, as if to include him in the question. Both only shrugged in reply.

“No one’s figured it out yet,” Delilah hummed, apparently trying to draw them back to topic.

It worked, because Hadar glanced at his laptop, then back up to Namata and Aisha, as if asking for permission. Namata nodded, and he got back to work. Delilah sat watching him with her chin in her hand and her eyes sparkling.

Hadar muttered what Tim was pretty sure was a curse, and that was when he realized: _Delilah must still have the firewalls up around her medical file. If_ they were discussing what he thought they were in this bilingual conversation.

Delilah apparently wanted to see what her stepson was capable of, apparently.

Tim waited for Hadar to toss the laptop aside, keeping one ear tuned into the conversation as it continued. Namata revealed, as they spoke in English for their visitor’s benefit now, that she was training to become a midwife alongside lending her nursing services to the military, and Talia asked her something in Hebrew, to which Namata only answered, “I have no idea.”

“Well, why not?” Talia asked, appearing to mostly be teasing her.

Tim was getting thoroughly tired of understanding only parts of what was being said, but he understood with perfect clarity when Hadar cried, “Holy sh—”

“Hadar!” Ziva snapped. “There are children who can hear you.”

“Yes,” Hadar handed the laptop off to Namata while he said faintly, “There are!”

 _He’s broken through Dee’s firewall?_ Tim realized as Namata looked at the screen, eyes widening as she said, “Oh. That explains why she’s growing differently.”

“What does?” Aisha stretched across Hadar to see the laptop screen. She froze as it dawned on her what she was seeing. “Oh.” She sat back up, only to put her head on Hadar’s shoulder and ask with a measure of dryness in her tone, “How’s the search for ‘prioritization’ going?”

He turned to her with dark eyes and, heedless of Ziva’s warning, swore at her. She grinned and kissed him on the cheek.

“Hey now,” Talia hummed disapprovingly at him before asking with a cheerfulness that Tim was pretty sure was partially false, “Is anyone going to share their findings with ‘the class’?”

Hadar cleared his throat nervously, reclaiming the laptop and disentangling himself from his girlfriends to stand and give it to his mother. Her eyes widened, and a smile grew slowly on her face as she stared at the contents of the screen. Tim leaned over to see exactly what Hadar had found, and he wasn’t at all surprised to see the photo from Delilah’s ultrasound on the screen.

He squeezed Dee’s hand as he asked Talia gently, “What do you think?”

“They’re beautiful, I’m sure,” she answered predictably. “One boy and one girl – I think it is… neat that you’ll have a chance with both.”

He released a shaky breath, admitting, “I’m terrified.”

“Of course you are.” Talia looked around him to Delilah, asking, “You are, too, yes?”

Delilah nodded instantly.

“That only means that you know that it’s important. Nervous, ‘terrified,’ is a great place to start.”

“Because you can only go up from there?” Tony asked dryly.

Talia’s kind smile remained unchanged as she agreed, “I suppose that is one way to put it.”

Delilah narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, beginning to ask Talia something in Hebrew. Aisha’s sudden gasp cut her off as she glanced at her watch. “ _Abba’s_ going to kill me! I’m late; I have to go home!” She scrambled onto her feet, kissing first Namata, then Hadar, before she dashed out of the house with wild eyes, shouting “goodbye” over her shoulder.

“I should go with her,” Namata said, standing with worried eyes.

“Not by yourself, you should not,” Hadar objected. “I think we are done here for now; I will go with you.”

“I’ll let you if you want to, but we both know Aisha would object to the idea of you being ‘done here’ when we all know you’re not, not really.”

Hadar huffed and rolled his eyes as he quickly got ready to leave. “You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” Namata gave him a _look_ before she kissed Talia’s cheek and said “goodbye.” She made it nearly to the door before she turned to Hadar and said, “You go; hurry to catch Aisha, and I’ll be along in a minute.”

There was a moment of wariness in Hadar’s expression as he considered, but then he nodded sharply and sprinted off. Namata remained where she was standing, her back to the others for a moment as she drummed her fingers against her thigh. Then she turned on a dime, striding the four steps it took to reach Delilah’s side. She asked Dee something in Hebrew, and Delilah tilted her cheek up to Namata with a polite smile.

“Goodnight, _em choreget_ ,” she said lightly, hurrying out of the house without so much as glancing at anyone else.

Delilah followed her with her gaze, eyes filled with confusion.

“Well.” Tony drew in a slow breath, peering down the hall to where Tali had long run off to play. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel like this has been possibly the longest day ever, and I am going to bed.”

“Tony.” He’d barely made it a step before Ziva’s voice made him freeze. He looked at her over his shoulder, reaching his hand out for her from where he stood. They both looked uncharacteristically scared and unsure, but they smiled when she took his hand and trailed him down the hall.

“Bed,” Delilah admitted with a deep, tired sigh. “Sounds perfect. So that’s where I’m going.” She looked at neither Tim or Talia in particular as she continued, “And if nothing else, I will see you both in the morning. In the meantime, I’d be happy if you chose to join me… and if you’re elsewhere, that’s fine with me, too.”

With that, she smiled lightly at both of them and wheeled herself down the hall. Both Tim and Talia were left blinking, first at her, and then at one another as they tried separately to puzzle out what she had meant.

Tim merely shrugged at Talia in silence, but his display of uncertainty wasn’t strictly true. He had at least _half_ of a pretty good idea about what Delilah meant, but he wasn’t sure _enough_ to talk about it aloud.

“We should go to bed,” Talia said, her tone growing even softer in the warm silence between them. “It’s late, and today has been… long.”

“What about Hadar?”

“I will wait up for him, hopefully ensure that all is well.”

Worry flickered through her expression, giving him pause. “Should I stay up too?” _Was that something he was supposed – or allowed – to do?_

She shook her head. “There’s no need. I… doubt he would appreciate it if you waited for him.”

She looked apologetic just saying it, and a weight like lead sunk into his stomach, but he swallowed a sigh and tried to brush it off with a tiny laugh and a light, “We’re not quite to that level yet, hm?”

“Tim…” she looked so _sad_ , and like she was going to start apologizing again.

He shook his head before she could do so. Looking over, he kissed her on the cheek before standing up and heading down the hallway. “Goodnight, Talia.” _I still love you_.

He caught sight of her wheelchair, folded and propped up in a corner of the hall that was shrouded in shadows. He wondered how he had missed it the other times he had come back here. He wondered if he should backtrack and offer to bring it to her. He wondered how the hell he was supposed to figure out how to maneuver between – or maybe _with_ – all the people who had been dropped into his life today.

Climbing into bed beside Delilah once he’s gotten ready for bed, he wondered if he was going to get any sleep tonight. He doubted it.

He’d thought Delilah was already asleep, but once he was settled in bed, she turned her head in the pitch-black darkness, asking curiously, “No Talia?”

“…No, not that I know of, Dee,” he snorted, trying to make less of the situation than he probably should have. “This bed is barely big enough for you and I, let alone a third person, too.” Delilah hummed noncommittedly, but didn’t really say anything, and he felt compelled to add, “Besides, she said she was going to wait up for Hadar.”

Delilah hesitated before hazarding, “Should you…”

“She told me not to.” At that admission, he gave voice to the heavy sigh that he’d held back in the front room.

Delilah found his hand underneath the blanket and leaned her head over on his shoulder. “We’re going to figure this out together – all three of us. Maybe even all four of us, if we’re really, really lucky.”

“You really think so?” He tried not to let too much doubt cloud his voice.

Something told him that Talia herself wasn’t going to be a problem, that he would be able to rekindle his relationship with her – and maybe even bring it to a better place than ever before – with the full approval of both her and Delilah. But Hadar… on all points, Tim thought he was going to be more difficult. Period. Difficult about him reestablishing a relationship with Talia, and difficult about trying to form _any_ sort of bond with Hadar himself.

Tim didn’t feel like he was needed, or really even wanted, in the young man’s life, and he could respect that. The problem was that he didn’t know how to find a balance between giving Hadar his space and being available for if and when his son did want him around.

“I promise.” Delilah squeezed his hand, saying, “But I can feel you thinking _way_ too hard for this hour. Our problems will all be there in the morning, but they won’t be any easier to figure out if you haven’t slept.”

He closed his eyes, muttering, “I know, I know.”

“Then sleep, honey.” She ran the fingertips of her free hand over his cheek, his temple, his forehead. Her touch was light as a feather, and he let himself relax into it as she promised, “I’ll be right here all night…”

* * *

Technically, Delilah kept her promise. She stayed with Tim all night. But when she heard the familiar rattling of a wheelchair in the otherwise silent house at dawn, it wasn’t an opportunity she wanted to miss. She got up. Dressing as quickly as she could, she wheeled first into the sitting room, then the kitchen, but the house was silent.

So, she looked outside, and there was Talia, barely visible from where Delilah was. Talia had her back to the house, facing the sunrise as she sat in her wheelchair beside one of the purple bushes that flanked the entrance to her house. As Delilah went outside, passing in front of her so that they could sit side by side, she noted that Talia’s eyes were closed, her face tilted upwards towards the rising sun.

The sky turned from purple, to pink, to orange before they spoke, and it was Talia who broke the soothing silence with a soft smile and a simple, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Delilah replied quietly. She turned to face Talia halfway, and they watched each other for a second before she remarked, “You look like you’ve been thinking harder than I have.”

Talia chuckled, turning to face forward again. “I was thinking about Aisha and Namata, actually.”

“Oh?” Delilah frowned slightly. “Why is that?” _Had they not gotten home safely?_

There was a thin, thoughtful smile on Talia’s face. “Do you know I’ve never seen them kiss before last night? So… why last night?”

“Aisha seemed frazzled; maybe if the two of them really are dating, she just did what came instinctively, only halfway thinking because she was in such a hurry?”

“Perhaps,” Talia allowed with a cant of her head, but the look in her eyes said she disagreed, and she said as much. “But Aisha is, I’d think, more… strategic then that. She’s tactical and does very little without reason.”

“Then what reason do you think she had?” Delilah asked curiously. _After all, Talia certainly knew these people better than she did._

“That is the question,” Talia hummed. The expression on her face unnerved Delilah as Talia studied her.

“What?”

Talia’s gaze snapped back out to the skyline as she spoke haltingly, suggesting, “Do you think… that she – that is, _they_ … feel that a… three… all three people together, is the best way to navigate this? Do you think that they were trying to spark an idea in the three of us?”

Delilah blinked, giving the thought a moment’s consideration before she smiled lopsidedly while pointing out, “Whether or not they meant for it to, I guess it did.”

“That is…” Talia glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. “Too much, yes?”

“I don’t think so,” Delilah answered. “Just because I married a man doesn’t mean I’m attracted _only_ to men. Clearly, Namata and Aisha feel the same way, I think I can safely assume that Hadar, at the very least, doesn’t care, and neither does Tim. I guess _you’re_ the only mystery left in my mind.”

“Oh, I don’t mind, either.”

Delilah narrowed her eyes at Talia, trying to decipher the exact meaning of the vague reply. “’Don’t mind’ what? What _other_ people do? Or are you attracted to more than just men?”

Talia sighed weightily, looking up and down the nearly deserted street before she gestured Delilah closer. “Come here.”

Talia’s eyes were uncertain, and a little wide, and Delilah leaned in, fully expecting Talia to whisper some truth in her ear like a dirty little secret. Instead, Talia leaned in too, and when she was a hairsbreadth away, whispered, “May I kiss you?”

Those dark, sincere eyes were impossible to look away from at the moment, and Delilah mumbled, “Yes.”

So she did, gentle and sweet, allowing Delilah to run her hands up into her hair as she cupped the brunette’s cheek.

“Is that how this is going to go?” a voice, still thick with sleep, asked from the doorway of the house.

Talia and Delilah jumped apart, Talia even going so far as to physically roll her chair further back.

“Relax,” Tony hummed. “I’m definitely not going to be the one who spills these beans to McGeek.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Delilah answered dryly, her gaze laser sharp.

“Also don’t tell Ziva?” Talia requested.

“I’ll try not to,” Tony agreed, stepping out to look up and down the nearly-empty street before he asked Talia, “What about McGee? You kiss Timmy yet?”

“What sort of question is that?” Delilah demanded irritably.

Talia put a hand on her arm, answering, “A protective one. They are a family – Gibbs’ team – yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then he is only protecting his little brother. It’s none of his business, but… I think I do not mind it.”

Delilah noticed that Talia didn’t answer Tony’s question, but she didn’t point that out. Neither did Tony. Instead, he said, “Maybe I’m trying to look out for my little sister as well as my brother?”

Both women looked at him in surprise, and Talia pointed out, “You don’t really even know me.”

“That doesn’t take away from the fact that you’re my sister-in-law.”

Talia raised her eyebrows, turning to wheel herself back into the house. “Was there another midnight marriage, and I did not know about it? Otherwise, you are not married to my sister, Agent DiNozzo, and I am not your sister-in-law.”

“Ouch, Talia!” Tony called, following her back into the house.

Delilah rolled her eyes and followed Tony into the house. Hadar was cooking again when Delilah wheeled into the kitchen, frying something that looked similar to French toast. “Morning.” He smiled brightly at his mother, and with a little more reticence, at Delilah. “Hungry?”

“Yes, please.” Ziva breathed deeply as she came into the room with Tali’s hand in hers. “It smells delicious!”

“He is a good cook,” Talia remarked with a hint of pride in her voice.

“I think I made enough for everyone,” Hadar said, putting the last piece of bread on the plate already piled high with food. “But I have to go to work, so unfortunately you will have to eat it without me.”

“Where’s McLazybones?” Tony asked. “Everybody else is up.”

“Does he do that often – call him those strange names?” Talia asked Delilah under her breath.

Delilah nodded.

“He’s right here,” Tim groused, nearly tripping over Tali as he came into the room and she darted to her father. “Time zones are horrible, Tony; let me rest.”

Tony opened his mouth to retort, but Ziva pointed sternly at him, cutting him off before he could start as she said, “Just say ‘hello’ to Tali.” Tony grinned, unabashed, and swept Tali into his arms as Ziva turned to Tim and said, “Good morning, McGee.”

“Good morning, Ziva.” Tim smiled softly at her, admitting, “It really is good to see you again, you know.”

“You too, Tim.” Ziva wrapped her arms impulsively around the agent’s neck, and Delilah saw her lips move, speaking so no one else could hear. Tim snorted. “I swear on my life, I will try, but…”

“But what…” Ziva asked cautiously.

“I have to be on a plane back to DC tomorrow,” he pointed out hesitantly.

“Then we have a lot of things that we need to decide today,” Talia said firmly, even though Delilah, right beside her, had heard her initial, soft gasp of shock.

“I’m sorry,” Tim apologized. “I should’ve found time to tell you yesterday.”

“It is all right.” Talia shrugged. “Yesterday was busy enough; this can be our work for today.”

“Speaking of work,” Hadar reached for a couple pieces of bread and then his jacket, hung on the back of a chair at the table. “I have to go.”

“Hadar.” There was so much in Talia’s tone – mostly the fact that she would’ve liked him to stay for the conversations that were to come.

He shook his head, turning back to her. “No matter what you decide, I’m staying here. I have a hear of service left, and Aisha and Namata are here. My life is here, Ima, you know that. But. I know that you need to be happy, and if that means that you go to America, then… you should go. All right?”

Talia blinked at him, nodded as if she wasn’t sure what to say.

“Good.” He nodded firmly, weaving around people to kiss her cheek. Just like Namata had last night, he turned to Delilah afterward, asking in Hebrew, “ _May I_?”

She tilted her cheek up to him, ignoring the surprising glassiness in his eyes as he kissed her cheek and straightened. “Have a good day,” he bid them all, darting out the door.

Tim stared at the door through which Hadar had gone, remarking, “He’s a good kid – a great man, I guess.”

“One of the best I know,” Talia agreed.

“Not to change the topic, but speaking of talking,” Tony piped up. “You know what unforgivable thing I thought of at like midnight last night?”

“What?” Tim asked.

“We forgot to call Gibbs. He’ll want to know, stat.”

“Oh,” Tim eyed him. “Dee and I didn’t forget, we’re just not going to be the ones to tell him, and I would suggest that you don’t either.”

Something sharpened in Tony’s eyes as he asked, “What _are_ you suggesting, McGee?”

“If Ziva’s the one who’s alive, why not let Ziva be the one to tell him so?” As he spoke, Tim fished his phone out of his pocket and held it out to Ziva.

She shook her head, tension coiling in her body and movements as she resigned herself to what needed to be done. “I can use my own phone.”

She turned as if she intended to go make the call immediately, but Tony grabbed her arm, stopping her before she’d gotten more than a couple of steps. “Ziva, you don’t have to; I can –”

“Oh,” she cut him off. “But I do have to. McGee is right; I _should_ , so I will.” She gently extracted her arm from Tony’s grip and walked out the front door, pulling her phone from her pocket as she went.

It was Tim who sighed deeply, breaking the silence that otherwise threatened to overwhelm the room. “Tony, I – I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at her. That wasn’t fair.”

“No,” Tony met his gaze frankly. “It wasn’t. But we both know who you’re actually mad at, and so does Ziva, and that’s why she’s okay with you snapping at her.”

“I’m not _mad_ at anyone, Tony, not Ziva, not Talia, not anybody,” Tim objected.

Delilah raised her eyebrows, but stayed silent, watching as Tony smirked at Tim, answering, “Yeah. Okay, Tim, I’ll let you figure that out on your own – and when you do, I’ll be there to talk, if you want.”

Tony turned then and left, following Ziva into the outdoors.

It was Talia who broke the silence this time, looking at her hands as she admitted quietly, “I never meant for this to happen.”

Noting that it was once again the three of them alone in the kitchen, Delilah answered levelly, “Yes and no.”

“What?” Tim asked her, and she could tell he _was_ getting irritated, regardless of what he claimed.

Delilah asked Talia, “You have a phone, or at least access to Ziva’s, right?”

“Yes.”

“So. For _at least_ the past year, you’ve had daily access to a phone. You could’ve called, could’ve told him you were alive, could’ve told him he had a son. But you didn’t.”

Tim’s gaze pinged wildly between the two women as Talia answered earnestly, “I know, and I hate myself for it every day, but so much time had passed by the time Ziva arrived, I thought it wouldn’t matter; I thought it would do more harm than good to enter back into your life, Tim, or to asked you to come here.”

“I would’ve been here in an instant though, if I had known you were alive!” Tim emphatically informed her. “With or without Hadar ever being mentioned.”

“Clearly. And that is what I did not want, because I was sure you had a life of your own with someone else – which I was right about.”

“No offense, Delilah,” he glanced for a moment at her before turning back to Talia. “But who cares? Yes, Delilah’s my wife, the mother of my children, a _huge_ part of my life. But _so are you_. We made vows to each other to go through life together, as much as we could when we were younger; I think we gave that our best shot, even with the distance between us. So how dare you – _how could_ ,” his voice cracked, and as she looked between Tim and Talia something felt like it cracked in Delilah’s chest too. “ _You_ – decide that I wouldn’t help you bear that? Bear the wounds, the trauma, the _kid_? Talia, I would’ve done my best to be here for you through _every_ step of _all_ of that! What did I do wrong that you didn’t know that?”

Talia gaped at him – even Delilah paused – asking, “What? Tim, no. We didn’t _know_ each other at all. We had only met three times.”

“But we loved each other, as well as we could. We _love_ each other…” The fight went out of him as he searched her eyes, asked hesitantly, “Don’t we?”

Talia laughed despite the tears in her eyes, answering counterproductively to her own side of the story, “Yes, of course. But it’s because I love you that I wanted to spare you.”

Tim shook his head. “We were also such dumb _kids_ ourselves back then, we didn’t know anything yet, not really, and I get that. But here’s what I know now: marriage isn’t about _sparing_ one another; it’s about sitting together in the foxholes, and that’s all I wish I had been able to do for you from the beginning. I get the feeling you deserve it.”

“Does that mean you can forgive me?” Talia asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” Tim exhaled slowly before genuinely smiling at her, a joke and an apology both in his tone as he admitted, “I guess I just needed to get one more rant out of my system. But I’m done now, I promise.”

“What next, then?” Talia asked.

“Now…” Tim considered her as he replied, “I think I want to try something.” He leaned in to whisper in her ear in Hebrew, “May I kiss you?”

Talia grinned, running a hand up through his hair as she said, “I had that that is the only Hebrew you know.”

And then she kissed him.

He was still smiling as they broke apart, and he informed her, “That one line has always been enough for me and you.”

“Only because we both have such ridiculous romantic tendencies.”

“It’s good to be romantic with your spouse!”

“Yes,” she smiled indulgently. “But I’m honest enough about myself –” she ignored the way Tim and even Delilah raised their eyebrows a little at that – “To know that I am a terribly softhearted, often easily-swayed _sap_ , and you, Tim…” she hesitated. “How do I even describe your sense of romance, Timothy McGee?”

“You’re an acquired taste, hun,” Delilah chimed in easily.

Talia smiled at her, then at Tim. “Exactly.”

“That’s not fair,” Tim complained, telling Delilah, “You’re just hard to please.”

“I’m really not… not most of the time.” With that, they compromised, though there had been half-smiles flitting across their faces the whole time. Among other things, life with Tim had taught Delilah not to take everything so seriously _all_ the time, and she felt like a levity would be nice before they got into the rest of what they needed to discuss. “So, the rants are done and we’re ready to have grown-up conversations now, right?” Both Tim and Talia nodded, almost in tandem. She folded her hands almost-tightly in her lap. “Wonderful. So – the conclusions we’ve come to are: I’m maintaining my relationship with Tim, so is Talia, right? Or is that too presumptuous?”

Tim and Talia shared a very long and searching look before he took her hand and she said, “No, that is right. I would like to stay married to Tim.”

“Wonderful.” She shoved past the question of making that “V” a “triangle” and took the conversation in a different direction. “What is this going to look like, on the most basic level? Is Talia moving stateside? Are we, Tim, going to move to Israel? Or are you just going to start taking a lot of trips back and forth between America and Israel?”

“I could do that,” Tim said quickly. “We can make that work if—”

“No,” Talia was already shaking her head. “That will not work, not with your jobs, not with Delilah’s condition.”

Delilah blinked. “In the long run, my being pregnant has very little to do with our long-term solution here.”

Talia sighed, turning to her with deeply weary eyes as she said, “Please do not… contest me in that.”

Delilah opened her mouth to do exactly that – to declare her independence and say that she could very well survive without Tim at least part of the time if she had to – but she stopped when she saw the depth of emotion in Talia’s eyes. Softly, she answered only, “Okay. In order for this to work, we all live nearby one another then?”

“I will immigrate,” Talia said, and though her tone was still conversational, it brooked no argument. “I can afford to.”

Tim asked, “Then why haven’t you before now?”

“Because my son’s life is here, and, such as it is, so is mine. But if Hadar says he will be all right without me, I will believe him. I… do believe him.”

“But you just said your life is here, too,” Tim pointed out. “I can’t ask you to leave that.”

“Why not? I already left a life behind once – for my son. Why not leave this life behind for my husband.?”

She said it as if it was so simple, and Delilah watched Tim sigh and purse his lips before he said, “If that’s really how you want to look at it…”

“It really is.”

“Great!” Delilah nodded sharply, determined to keep the conversation going forward. “I don’t suppose your passport is up to date, is it, Talia?”

“It is, actually. Just in case I might want to… duck out of sight of someone I might wish to still think me dead.”

“In that case,” even Delilah hesitated for a second as she realized just _how quickly_ they were barreling through this. “Would you like me to see what I can do about getting you a seat home on our plane the US?”

It was Talia’s turn to pause, and as the other woman inhaled through her nose, Delilah saw her own thoughts fill her dark eyes. “Yes,” she said after a pregnant pause. “I think I would. I’ll talk to Hadar as soon as he returns home, so that we can work on settling things about the house and such as much as we can before… before we leave.”

“So, you’re _moving_ to the United States,” Tim reiterated as if he, too, was trying to process. “Immediately.” He looked between Talia and Delilah, stumbling as he tried to find a way to ask, “Are you… Is it okay… I mean, do you plan to share the apartment with Delilah and I?”

Again, Talia visibly paused, only to turn questioning eyes to Delilah. _Deferring._ Delilah, in turn, shrugged, offering her an uncertain smile as she said, “I’m willing to try it if you two are.”

Both Tim and Talia nodded.

“Alright, there’s that settled, too. Anything else we absolutely need to figure out right now?” _Like her and Talia’s kiss, and what it could mean, maybe?_

But Tim, oblivious, turned to Talia instead and asked, “Should you get started with calling immigration or something? Or transferring the house into Hadar’s name, maybe?”

Talia pursed her lips, thinking for a moment before she asked Tim, “If we are done here, may I borrow your phone? I do not have one of my own, but I would like to tell Hadar of our plans, at least.”

“Sure.” Tim handed her his phone without a second thought, but when Talia tried to call Hadar with it, their son didn’t pick up. Talia sighed deeply. Tim raised his eyebrows, asking, “Does he have caller ID?” Talia nodded, and Tim’s head dropped forward. “Ah.”

Talia spoke into the phone, beginning to leave a voicemail. “Hadar, it’s your _ima._ Answer your phone, please. Work has never gotten in your way before; do not use it as an excuse now, please. I know you better th— Why hello, Hadar.” She shot Tim a look Delilah wasn’t sure how to interpret when Hadar answered the call in the middle of her message.

Tim looked away, clenching and unclenching his fists with sadness just a little too plain in his expression. Delilah moved, following instinct rather than any truly helpful plan, and took her husband’s hands in her own. She kissed his knuckles, gently promising in a whisper, “We will _all_ be alright.”

Tim looked dubiously at the phone Talia held, clearly thinking of the young man on the other end of it, but he said nothing for a long minute. They sat and listened to Talia explaining their decisions to Hadar instead. Suddenly, Tim turned to Delilah and asked quietly, “Can we talk outside for a second?”

Delilah narrowed her eyes at him, her gaze asking _“Why?”_ even as she said, “Sure.”

She folded her hands in her lap and let him push her chair out into the sunshine. She raised her eyebrows as he wheeled her around the side of the house, but stayed quiet until he stared down at her and asked, “Okay, what’s changed?”

“Changed… with what?” she asked with purposefully wide-eyed innocence.

Tim shook his head, knelt in front of her. “Talia is not hard to read, and you’re really not as difficult as you’d like to think you are, either. Something has changed between you two, and I would like to know what. Delilah, if this is going to be difficult for either of you, I don’t—”

“Tim.” Delilah took his hands, stopping him mid-sentence with a careful smile. “There are some things about this that are going to be hard. There just are. For one thing, I’m pretty sure our marriage is invalid, and we need to get a divorce on paper before somebody slaps you with bigamy charges.”

Tim looked suddenly, painfully stricken, and his hands tighten around hers.

“Tell me you’d thought of that already,” Delilah requested slowly, afraid she’d just sprung something awful on him.

Tim shook his head. “ _Bigamy_ …” he breathed. “I should’ve thought of it before now, probably, but I didn’t.” He looked at her with fearful eyes, declaring, “Delilah, I can’t handle it if you leave me. I—”

She was already shaking her head. “That’s not what I meant at all, hon. I’m not leaving you, not now, not ever. But I need you to hear me out and think about this logically. If you and I get an official divorce – just on paper – we can still live together, wear or rings, raise our kids together. The twins will have your name; I can keep my hyphenated name. Nothing you and I are doing changes anywhere but on official documents.

“Your being married to Talia will greatly increase her chances of getting a visa, too,” Delilah pointed out. “And I really feel like that needs to be considered here.”

Tim looked like he couldn’t even believe the words coming out of his own mouth as he scrubbed his hands over his face and agreed, “You’re right. I’m sure you’re right about all of it.”

“Okay,” Delilah agreed gently, ignoring the twisting nerves in her gut. “We’ll start on that when we get back home.”

“Do you know what I like about this type of dirt?” Talia asked suddenly, coming from around the side of the house. “You cannot hear wheelchairs on it.”

“How long have you been there?” Tim asked on a sigh.

“Long enough to hear you decide who you’re going to stay married to,” Talia replied disapprovingly.

“It’s not like that,” Delilah began calmly.

“It’s purely a legal thing. First married has legal status as wife, and that’s you in the eyes of the United States’ law,” Tim declared simply, adding before she could object. “And D’s right about your application for a visa going smoother if we’re still married in the eyes of the States.”

Talia put up no further objection, saying, “As you wish.”

“What did Hadar say?” Tim asked her.

“Very little. He meant it when he said he would support me in whatever I wish to do, but he also meant it when he said he wouldn’t yet consider leaving Israel himself. He isn’t surprised by my decision, however.”

“But he isn’t… in a hurry to get to know me, is he?” Tim asked, crestfallen.

Talia hesitated as Delilah squeezed Tim’s hand again. “He is not. But give him time, and he will be. Trust me and give him time. I know my – _our_ – son, and when he’s ready to approach you as a son, he _will_ do it.”

“In the meantime,” Delilah pointed out, purposefully steering the conversation in what she hoped was a nicer direction. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea for the three of us to work on our relationships and getting to know and relearn one another.”

“Right again,” Talia said, far more approving now.

“That reminds me,” Tim remarked, smirking to himself as he stood to his full height, knowing very well how much he towered over her and Talia in their chairs. “You never answered my question, Delilah. What changed between you two?”

Talia and Delilah looked at one another before Delilah declared, “There was a kiss – one kiss this morning.”

Tim’s eyebrows rose, though he didn’t seem too surprised as he asked, “Is there going to be more?”

Again, the two women looked at one another, and it was Talia who replied, “Maybe. Probably. But we are only thinking about it as an _option_ for now.”

“Taking it slowly and getting to know one another,” Delilah seconded. “Don’t you think _something_ deserves to go a little slowly throughout this whole thing?”

“Probably,” Tim said as Talia added an emphatic, “Yes.”

“In that case,” Delilah grinned at the irony of her statement as she reached a hand towards both Tim and Talia. “Let’s go see how quickly we can get the three of us back to the States, shall we?”

“Let’s,” Talia agreed.

Tim added, “Absolutely,” and led the way back into the house.


End file.
